Faculty News

July 16, 2016

Teresa Berger attended an international conference at Sant’Anselmo in Rome in early May, where she gave a paper on “The Manifold Languages of Reconciliation in a Digital Age.” While in Italy, she also appeared on the Italian television program entitled “The Diary of Pope Francis”—a half hour daily program that shares information about the Pope—to discuss the prestigious Charlemagne Prize, which Pope Francis had been awarded that day. She had an essay, “And Became Hu/man” published in a collection of feminist essays on Christology, entitled The Strength of Her Witness: Jesus Christ in the Global Voices of Women, ed. Elizabeth A. Johnson (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2016). The essay is a reprint of a chapter from her book Fragments of Real Presence (2005). In addition, she and Bryan Spinks have co-edited a book entitled Liturgy’s Imagined Past/s: Methodologies and Materials in the Writing of Liturgical History Today (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2016).  Based upon papers presented at the 2014 Yale Institute of Sacred Music Liturgy Conference, the book seeks to invigorate discussion of methodologies and materials in contemporary writings on liturgy’s pasts and to resource such writing at a point in time when formidable questions are being posed about the way in which historians construct the object of their inquiry.

 

Professor Emeritus of Choral Conducting Simon Carrington will take up a new role at the University of Birmingham, UK, as Visiting Professor of Choral Conducting, beginning October 2016. Carrington will join the department of music to conduct two of the University’s most decorated vocal ensembles - Birmingham University Singers and University Women’s Choir. Carrington will also support the teaching provision of the Music M.A.: Choral Conducting program at the University.

 

Martin Jean performed as part of the Atlanta Summer Organ Festival on June 29, 2016, at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta, GA.

 

Recently Judith Malafronte played harpsichord for performances of Monteverdi Opera scenes with the New York Continuo Collective, where she is on the coaching staff, and wrote a featured program essay on Bizet’s Carmen for the San Francisco Opera. In addition to writing regularly for Opera News and Early Music America magazine, she leads a popular seminar on opera for Yale Alumni College, and teaches chant and medieval notation to children ages 7 – 17 at St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk.

 

 

Henry Parkes will be speaking at an interdisciplinary symposium in Regensburg, Germany, July 7-9, 2016.  The symposium, organized by Harald Buchinger (ISM Fellow 2012-13), aims to explore the typology of liturgical books, and will also feature presentations by Peter Jeffery (ISM Fellow 2016-17) and Andrew Irving (ISM Fellow 2012-13).  He and his wife Rachel Parkes, who worked in the concert production office during the 2015-16 year, welcomed their first child, George, in May.

 

Markus Rathey has been elected president of the American Bach Society, which he will lead for the next four years.  In May, he had an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “The Religious Heart of Bach’s Music.” In April, he gave a lecture at Amherst College, entitled “Bach’s Oratorios and the Image of Jesus in the Eighteenth Century.” His Yale appointment as Professor in the Practice of Music History took effect July 1 (see box).

 

Bryan Spinks will be giving one of the main papers at the August meeting of the Society for Liturgical Study, in Mirfield, UK. The conference theme is “Role and Ritual in Worship” and his paper is entitled: “From Functional to Artistic? The Development of the Fraction in the Syrian Orthodox Tradition.”

 

Jimmy Taylor led the Yale Voxtet on a tour of Munich, Germany, where they did a recital with Christoph Hammer which featured three historic fortepianos and the music of Mozart, Brahms, Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. While in Munich, they sang in various churches and spaces associated with Orlando di Lasso, Hassler, and Mozart, including the Cuvilliés Theater, the Residenz, and St. Michael’s Church. This summer, Taylor will be teaching for the Middlebury German for Singers Program and the Wintergreen Music Festival in Virginia, where he will give seminars on diction and performance practice and perform a recital of Handel arias and duets with Arianne Zuckermann. He will also be teaching at the International Baroque Institute at the Longy School of Music.

 

Christian Wiman published an article in the American Scholar entitled “I Will Love You in the Summertime.” You can read the full text here.